Tom Clancy's Act of Valor (22 page)

“On me, Banditos,” Engel called over the tac net, and the five SEALs took a position on a line abreast with Engel, facing the cantina. “Tom, you have us?”

“Negative. You must be behind a building.”

Engel took a portable laser and pointed it skyward, moving it in small circles. The motion created an IR shaft of light marking his position.

“Now?”

“We got you, Blackbeard. Stay tight there unless you call out your move.”

“Roger that, Tom, and you are cleared hot.”

At that instant, three of the locals burst from the front door of the cantina and were immediately taken under fire by both the Mk48 and the Mk46. All three went down before they had gotten ten yards from the door, dead or mortally wounded. Then came the Filipinos, and it became an IR shooting gallery. They moved with good tactical discipline, but they were blind and had no cover. The SEALs all had LA-5 IR target lasers on their weapons. Through their NODs, it was just a matter of putting the green dot on the Tango and pressing the trigger. Two squirters bolted from the rear door and were picked up by the sniper on the top of the freight hauler. Then suddenly it became very quiet. That silence was quickly broken by the fast-approaching Knighthawks. They came in fast and low, tail-walking across the beach as they bled off airspeed and altitude. First one, then the other, touched down for but an instant and disgorged their SEAL fire teams. The two fire teams took up positions north and west of the cantina.

“Blackbeard, Tomcat, this is Rat Pack. We are in place, over.”

“This is Blackbeard and roger that. Welcome to the party, Rat Pack. We are going in by the front door. Three of us inside, two flankers, and one holding at the door. How copy, over?” Engel was now as much concerned with friendly fire as he was with clearing this last building. He listened as his Team One SEALs acknowledged. One of the Tomcat support-by-fire positions hurriedly moved so as to bring the cantina under a better field of fire.

“Banditos moving,” Engel called.

“Banditos moving,” the other two squads acknowledged.

Sonny and his SAW flanked left, and Weimy went to the right. A.J. led Nolan, Ray, and Engel to the door. The new dawn continued to grow in the east, but the cantina was now dark, with the front door half open. They were flattened at the front door frame, A.J. and Engel on one side, Ray and Nolan on the other. Engel nodded to Ray and Nolan, and all three pulled a flash-bang grenade from their vests and jerked out the pin.

“Three, two, one,” Engel quietly counted, and all three tossed their grenades inside.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

A.J., as always, was first in, crossing right to left—then Nolan, left to right. Engel came straight in. Ray, the radioman, would hold security at the door. From behind the bar, a man with an old M79 40mm grenade launcher popped up. He could hear nothing but ringing in his ears from the flash-bangs and saw almost nothing but spots—almost. He did see enough to catch the outline of a form in the door against the coming dawn. He pointed and fired, and a fraction of a second later, the same man was double-tapped by Chief Nolan. A lone Filipino fled out the rear door. Ray fired twice, hitting him once, but it was a through-and-through shot. The man kept running.

Outside, there were a great number of SEALs looking for a diminishing number of targets. The man carrying Ray’s bullet ran like a man with a hot poker in his side, which, in effect, he had. He took but three strides before being cut down by tracers from both the support-by-fire positions and the blocking force.

Atop one of the trailer homes, a man with an RPG raised up and fired. With a loud
WHOOSH
, the rocket sailed over Sonny’s head and exploded in a fireball just behind the cantina. The gunner immediately became a magnet for tracer rounds. He was dead before he could take the launcher from his shoulder. Then muzzle flashes appeared from the windows of both trailers, and for ten full seconds, the two mobile homes were shredded by automatic weapons fire and rocked by grenade hits. There was no more fire from the trailers. The silence that followed was cut by Nolan’s voice on the tactical net.

“Man down! I got a man down! Get me a medic in here!”

The Team One platoon officer immediately stepped in. “Rat Pack, this is Tomcat. Hold your position. My element will be assaulting the target building from the southeast. Tomcat moving, break, Blackbeard, what is your status, over.”

It was Nolan again. “Blackbeard actual is down. Get your medic here A-S-A-P!”

“Roger that, Blackbeard. Tomcat, out.”

The eight SEALs of the Team One support squad made their way through the village on a skirmish line, moving quickly. Four converged on the cantina, while the other four moved to clear the two shot-up trailers. The platoon officer and his combat medic made straight for the front door of the cantina. Inside, headlamp beams cut through the smoke to converge on a man lying on his back on the floor. It was Roark Engel. He was breathing shallowly, but he was not moving. With Nolan at his side, the medic began cutting the straps to his combat vest and body armor. Then they began cutting away his clothing, looking for wounds. There were none. The medic shrugged as he took a pencil flashlight and lifted one of Engel’s eyelids. This got a reaction. The lieutenant jerked his head away from the offending light and tried to sit up.

“Whoa, easy there, sir,” said the medic. “You can talk, but don’t move. How are you feeling?”

Engel’s voice was scratchy but audible. “Like someone’s sitting on my chest.” He saw Nolan hovering {olaont>

Nolan and the medic helped him to a sitting position, but he clutched at them as his head began to spin.

“Easy there, sir,” said the medic. “Something knocked you on your ass. We’re just not sure what it was.”

“I think it was this.” Dropping to one knee beside them, A.J. was gingerly holding a 40mm grenade round, sans the propellant charge, in his thumb and forefinger.

“Take that fucking thing outside,” Nolan ordered. “Now!”

A.J. grinned but left with the grenade, still holding it carefully.

“Who . . . What was it?” Engel asked, still confused.

“That dead Tango behind the bar,” Nolan explained, “center-punched you with a forty mike-mike round when you stepped inside. It takes about fifteen feet for that round to arm itself coming out of the tube. You were only about ten feet away.”

“Lucky me,” Engel managed. Then to the Team One platoon officer, “We secure?”

“We are, and your communicator has called us in secure. My guys are conducting a cordon and search of the area right now. And there are some FBI agents and Homeland Security people inbound from the
Bonnie Dick
. This place will soon be crawling with civilians.”

Engel considered this and nodded, still not thinking too clearly. Then he jerked his head around, “Anybody hurt?”

“Just you, Boss,” Nolan replied, looking at the bruise that was now beginning to form on Engel’s chest. “Just you.” He was trying to make light of what had just happened, but when he had turned and found his platoon officer unconscious on the cantina floor, his heart had leapt into his throat. “And sir, don’t ever do that to me again.”

“Help me up, will you?”

They pulled him to his feet. His gear was still on the floor, and his assault uniform was in rags, but he still clutched his M4. Soon helicopters began to arrive with inspectors, analysts, and intelligence professionals. In the growing light, they inspected, photographed, and tagged the ceramic-ball vests. Explosive ordnance technicians watched as an FBI forensic specialist individually bagged them. Outside in the growing daylight, Roark Engel walked around the cantina flanked by Chief Nolan and A.J. Three steps from the front door, one of the Filipinos was facedown in the rocky soil with a bullet in his brain. He was wearing one of the explosive vests, his hand motionless on the activation lanyard.

“C’mon, Boss. Let’s get you to the helo and back aboard the
Bonnie Dick
for a {ck< width= good going-over by the ship’s doctor.”

With the
Bonhomme Richard
closing on the island, it was but a fifteen-minute Knighthawk ride from the village to the ship. The platoon from SEAL Team One stayed behind to provide security for the investigators, while the Bandito squad was lifted out. Lieutenant Engel said he was fine, but Chief Nolan insisted he first go to sick bay and get himself checked out. He was still in his sliced-and-diced assault uniform when he arrived at the
Bonnie Dick
’s sick bay. He looked like a tramp in a train yard. Ray had radioed ahead that his officer would need some attention, and a doctor and a corpsman were standing by. The medical officer, a full commander, wasn’t happy when Nolan declined to leave while the doctor examined Engel.

“Y’know,” Nolan said while the doctor checked him, “that was a pretty stupid thing to do, stepping in front of the forty mike-mike grenade just to keep it from traveling the arming distance. Not one of your better moves, Boss.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Now, if you had just stepped a little to one side, Ray could have taken that round. Course, he was farther away, and it might have had time to arm itself.”

“Might have,” Engel replied.

“How’s he doing, Doc?”

The physician ignored Nolan and kept prodding at Engel. Then he again listened with his stethoscope for several minutes.

“No permanent damage,” he finally announced, “but we’ll give you a chest X-ray just to be sure. It’s like you were in a head-on collision at moderate speed and the air bag deployed. Your vest and body armor sufficiently disbursed the force of the round or it might have cracked your sternum, perhaps with fatal results. But it was the chest plate in your body armor that made the difference—that and the grenade not going off. That bruising on your chest will probably become more pronounced, and you’ll have some discomfort, but I think you’ll be fine. You’re a lucky man, Lieutenant.”

“Tell me about it, sir.”

“You want something for the pain? Or something to help get you to sleep?”

“I think I’ll be okay, sir. We’ve been up awhile, so I’ll have no problem going to sleep.”

“Well then,” the doctor offered, “I’d tell you to take it easy, but I’d probably just be wasting my breath.”

Engel grinned. “I’ll do what I can to get some rest, Doctor, and thank you.”

When they reached the SEAL compartment belowdecks, the Banditos were overhauling their equipment. It was standard SEAL procedure: equipment first. Once they had their gear and weapons cleaned and set up, they would eat, shower, and then maybe get some sleep. Engel quickly pulled o {ckld tn a fresh set of cammies and began to disassemble his M4 to prepare it for cleaning. Out of curiosity, he found his combat vest and took out the chest plate. There was a shallow indentation in the ceramic armor, but it was otherwise intact. It was advised that a plate be replaced after it received a strike, but he pushed it back into its carrier on his armor. It was a lucky plate.

After cleaning his rifle and reloading his magazines, he took his radio from his vest and set it on the charging bank. Then he laid down on his bunk for just a minute to rest before finishing up with his gear. He was looking forward to a shower and some hot chow. And that’s the last thing he remembered until Chief Nolan shook him awake.

“Wha—what is it, Chief?” He came awake quickly and would have bolted upright but for the pain in his chest. It was excruciating.

“Easy, sir. Maybe you ought to sit up slowly.” And he did.

With his feet on the deck, he managed to take a full breath. The pain was still there but manageable. Engel looked around and saw that his boots were off and that his combat gear was set up and staged on a folding chair at the foot of his bunk. He frowned at his own inattention; a SEAL was supposed to take care of his own gear. Nolan again, he suspected, although it could have been any one of them.

“How long have I been down?”

“About six hours. They want us up in the TOC. Something’s come up.”

He stood and found the pain in his chest a little more bearable. “I got time for a shower?”

“I think they want us now, Boss. The master chief from the intel shop just left. Seems there may be a follow-on operation in the offing.”

“The fun never stops, does it?” With some discomfort, he sat back on his bunk and began to lace on his boots. Then he noticed a donut and a steaming cup of black coffee on a chair beside his bunk.

“Pretend you’re in the Navy and have some coffee, Boss. It’ll do you good.”

He did, and as the warm liquid surged down into his chest and stomach, it did indeed feel good.

The little TOC off the
Bonhomme Richard
’s large CIC was once again crowded. There was the ship’s intelligence officer; the man from the NSA, who seemed very nervous; and Lieutenant Susan Lyons. She greeted Roark Engel and Dave Nolan warmly.

“Thanks for coming up here so quickly, and I never did get the chance to thank you for getting Dr. Lisa Morales out of that hellhole in Costa Rica. And she asked me to again thank you.”

“How is she doing?” Engel asked.

“Quite well, actually. She’s come a long way, but as you know, there was a { th"0" widlot of physical and psychological damage. She’s getting help with both. I’ll tell her you were asking about her. Now, the reason for this meeting is a follow-up to the operation on Cedros Island. There’s good news and there’s bad news.”